Abstract: The previous chapter outlined Alexander the Great's literary history from the classical era to the early medieval period, demonstrating the varied interpretative possibilities in his translatio that arose from early on in his afterlife as a literary figure. This chapter and the one that follows it set two Alexander texts, one in Latin, one en romanz, in what is recoverable of their twelfth-century compositional contexts (as defined both by location and also by contemporary works) in order to investigate the range of meanings in which Alexander participates at this later moment in literary history. Looking at these texts in this comparative way will uncover the political and cultural narratives into which Alexander is co-opted. This in turn will help to reveal the part his literature plays in the construction of the literary identities, whether political, religious, or linguistic, which are important in the northern France of this period, where different dynasties, institutions, and languages meet and compete, and therefore enable us to see whether similarly complex relationships between texts and contexts exist in the Middle Ages as well as in antiquity.
Publication Year: 2018
Publication Date: 2018-07-31
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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